The Ticking Clock

I lie down, close my eyes, and lay my arm across the bridge of my nose to block any light that would peer through my eyelids. As my wrist dangles beside my ear, I hear the ticking of my watch - tick, tick, tick. I can hear the passage of time. One tick after the other, and they don’t stop. Even if I smashed the watch, the ticks wouldn’t stop. Even if I destroyed every clock in the world, the ticking wouldn’t stop. So, instead, I try to relax, let the beta blocker settle in, and listen carefully to the ticking in hopes it might lull me to sleep, instead of sending me into a panic.

Tick, tick, tick. Even when I take the watch away from my ear, I can hear the ticking in my head. The ticking reminds me that time moves ever forward against our will. I can almost feel my bones cracking, my cells dying, my skin wrinkling, my vision fading, my hearing withering, all with age. I peer into my inevitable future should I stay this course, and it’s a lonely, decrepit existence. Should I even make it to old age, should I even have children, I must’ve had some miracles handed down to me from above, perhaps out of pity. Likely, my mind would rot away with my body, and I’d probably die before I turned eighty. This is, of course, the luckier of the possible outcomes. Luckier, or just extended.

As the world around me cracks and crumbles with me, becoming overgrown with nature reclaiming its land, I fade into sleep. Sometimes, I wonder, “Will this be my last? Will I wake again?” I often don’t have too many qualms no matter the answer. Either I do wake up again, and I get one more hand to gamble with, or I don’t and I resign from this circuitous, laborious game. For a long time, a great and impeding malaise has hung over me and ensnared me, making most everything a great task to defeat. I’ve been tired for about as long, and am surprised already at how long I’ve lasted. But it’s not my bones or my body that’s cracking; it’s my mind and my soul. It’s not so easy to repair and sustain one’s mind and soul.

“Depression is the inability to construct a future,” said the psychologist, Rollo May. For much of my life, I have and will have no future. I will have good days and I will have bad days. I may be manic, or I may be depressed. But whether I even have a future, I will inevitably fall asleep, letting fate decide if I am to wake.